Just saying...

 

Alysa Liu, US Gold Medal Figure Skater

The "Quad God" finished 8th. 

I love the idea of giving messages on fruit. Here my son's name, Tai, is part of this, by an unknown person.

The last of the snow in a parking lot at a doctor's office. Right now (Sunday morning) there are light flurries, and it's getting really cold. Here we go again! Many people are hunkering down for huge snowfall (2 feet for New York forecast!)

What loneliness is more lonely than distrust? 

-George Eliot (pen name of Mary Ann Evans), novelist (1819-1880)

Celebrating what we hope for together is better than fighting over what we believe separately.

STEVEN CHARLESTON

Maybe the Angry Women - 8

Moonlit Dance by Sheryl Luxenburg

 Today's goddess:

MACHA

From Girl God Books FB 2024

Art by Lucy Pierce

"The Great Mother Goddess Macha vanished from the stage of Irish history following her downfall at the hands of the king and his warriors. The disappearance of Macha symbolized the elimination of the possibility of any woman-centered social system, philosophy, or religion. The Male Word, rather than Female Womb, would take responsibility for ensuring the continuation of the social order, albeit that this Word was reinforced and sustained by a discourse on, and the threat of, death rather than life...

The Triple Goddess would be replaced by the Trinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a Trinity created by means of will, and obedience no longer dependent upon the fertility of womanhood to fulfill its designs. As Christianity took hold in Ireland, it would make alliances and compromises with the warriors and provide alternative occupations for the old male religious leadership. But women and the energies they represented were a fundamental threat to the new religious consciousness...

Remember in the Macha story we heard her final cry, 'A mother bore each one of you.' To a matricentered society this would have been the ultimate plea...this plea recalled people to their responsibilities toward their creator and their common origins through the Great Mother."

~ Mary Condren, "The Serpent and the Goddess: Women, Religion, and Power in Celtic Ireland"

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I ask for justice.

Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who killed a US citizen, Renee Nicole Good, Jan 7, 2026. There is not enough  legal effort going  on to examine his actions still!

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Last week, on Jan. 22, was the anniversary of passage of the Supreme Court's

... landmark Roe v. Wade ruling (1973). The plaintiff was “Jane Roe,” a woman who was forbidden to seek an abortion in Texas, but couldn’t afford to travel to a neighboring state. The defendant, Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade, argued that life begins at conception and therefore the state had a compelling interest in protecting that life.

Justice Harry Blackmun, who had once served as counsel to the Mayo Clinic, wrote the decision. He wrote: “We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man’s knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.” Therefore, the court based its decision on the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments and the right to privacy, and ruled seven to two in favor of Jane Roe.

The decision forbade states from outlawing abortions in the first trimester and set limits on regulation of abortion in the second and third trimesters. The court also required that exceptions to any regulations be made when the health of the mother was at stake.

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The Walk for Peace continues

In Charlotte NC

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Grateful eyes look at each thing as if they had never seen it before and caress it as if they would never see it again.

BR. DAVID STEINDL-RAST ---------------------- "Please join me and many others in making the six compassionate vows of: environmental sustainability, gender equality, socioeconomic justice, participatory governance, cultural tolerance, and nonviolence and peace." Barb Rogers (Thanks, Robertson Work for stating this first.)

Real witches

Witches tea party!

Personally I've been wondering why I'm not in a celebratory mood for Halloween this year. I finally realized that dealing with life and death issues while being sick this year, I'm thinking a lot about my own mortality. And I do want to continue to live as long as I'm somewhat capable, and able to think clearly. So I've looked at a natural burial place in a local cemetery, then decided against making a decision on that now. It's really depressing.

And I'm not doing much talk about end of life issues. I want to have plans to move forward instead...in this living world. Whatever the other one might be, I'm just putting it aside for now. 

As I write this Monday morning...

Right now I'm having an aural migraine, where I lose vision and get blinded by sparkly lights in a blooming kind of circle. It starts in the center of my vision, and ends with streams of banners on the outside. Usually it only lasts 10-15 minutes, and then I have light sensitivity for a few hours. As you can see (while I can't very well) I can keep doing many things, including driving, by shifting my focus around to wherever the vision still remains. No pain usually. Whew.

So when everyone's decorating their lawns with death...skeletons, fake graves, ghosts, goblins, living dead everywhere! - I have little interest. I've always avoided horror movies. Too much to be scared of in real life, thank you very much. I don't want a fake scare.

I used to put up an altar for the ancestors. Even that honoring of those who gave me life has lost its interest this year. I just miss so many people who have "gone on before." Including my pets.

I do still have friends who are witches, or at least witchy. I love that they celebrate with lots of decorations, and maybe some special foods for Halloween. 

I got out my caldron...which has served many rituals. So that's as much as I'm decorating this year.

My visit with pulmonologist Monday gave me a honest appraisal of my recovering from pneumonia. He said I'd need another 3 months before I've cleared enough to have my lungs evaluated to see the status of my bronchiectasis...where various lung damages might show up on a CT as well as with breathing tests. I was realistic. If my lungs have at least a half ability still for breathing, I want to plan to move to the southwest US where it's drier. If my lungs show a great deal of damage, I'm reconciled to not moving, but planning that green burial plot for eventual use of my remains.

So we have to wait till early February to find out more.

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H. Byron Ballard, a friend, a witch who lives in Asheville NC.

A joke photo of Byron recently taken.

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And for those who are aware of this time when our ancestors who have gone before are closer to us, there is this:

A prayer for the dead.

Each night, at twilight, we remember. With love, with gratitude, we remember.

You have come to the end of this pathway

In a journey to which we bear witness.

You have come to the end of a pathway

That is barred with a gate and a door.

May this door open swiftly and silently.

May this gate give you a moment’s grace

In which to rest your spirit before you venture through.

We stand here with you, as your companions,

As your family, for you are beloved.

But, for now, we must remain here.

We can not go with you to this old land.

Not yet.

For you will see the Ancestors.

You will see the Beloved Dead.

You will walk among the Divine Beings

That guide and nurture us all.

You go to dwell in the lands

Of summer and of apples

where we dance

forever youthful, forever free.

We can hear the music in the mist

The drums that echo our sad hearts.

We can see your bright eyes and your smile.

And so we open the gate.

We push back the door.

We hold the gate open.

We glance through the doorway,

And with love and grief and wonder

We watch you walk through.

Hail the Traveler!

All those remembered in love, in honor,

Live on.

Farewell, o best loved,

O fairest,

Farewell.